As consumers seek every more mobile technologies and convenience, more content and services are being delivered to mobile and/or compact devices. At the same time, access terminals, such as mobile phones, are ever smaller or compact in size to allow users to conveniently carry them anywhere they go. Due to their small size, the access terminals often have limited processing capabilities and/or power source (e.g., batteries). A trade-off is often made between processing performance and battery life. More powerful processors consume more power, thereby shortening the life of the battery between charging. However, less powerful processors may not provide sufficient processing power needed for newer applications. For example, with the advent of third generation (3G) and fourth generation (4G) telecommunication standards based on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), high speed data applications (e.g., internet access, voice over IP, video delivery, etc.) are being implemented for wireless networks. The higher data rates provided by 3G and 4G networks place increasing pressure on processor cores with limited clock rate to support these higher data rates. For handset manufacturers and other original equipment (OEMs) manufacturers that incorporate wireless communication chips and chip sets, these factors lead to added pressure to support the high speed data applications by using off-the-shelf (OTS) commercial mobile operating systems, such as, Windows Mobile, Linux, or Symbian. Unfortunately, such mobile operating systems frequently consume significant processing time in switching contexts, presenting a major hurdle for efficiently supporting next generation high data rates, especially for layered software architectures required by OTS mobile operating systems. Moreover, mobile device hardware typically attempts to reduce the clock rate of the processor core in an effort to conserve or otherwise minimize power consumption.
Consequently, techniques are needed to reduce power consumption of limited clock rate processors without sacrificing processing performance for higher data rates.